Cultural Encounter In The Joy Luck Club

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First of all, culture can be defined as practices between people in cultural societies. Cultural encounter is also defined as the cultural identities and symbolic figurative and interpretational forms through an international and global perception. The concept of cultural encounters is explained and illustrated in the literature as the dynamic perception of culture. Cultural encounter concept is planned to deal with all the varieties of this cultural phenomenon including the communication between cultures in place and time, the interactions between people, the dialogue and conversations between them, the conflict between the people of one culture in another culture. This essay will analyses and demonstrate how the concept of cultural encounter …show more content…

She focuses the novel around four Chinese immigrant families who have made the move to San Francisco.
The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan that focuses on four Chinese immigrant families starting a new life in San Francisco. The four families charter a club known as the Joy Luck Club and begin playing the Chinese native game of Mahjong. The author, Amy Tan, attempts to highlight the tender connection between mothers and daughters. Tan structures the book into four sections, like a mahjong game, and the story unfolds as the ladies share their stories in vignettes. The author does an outstanding job of discussing and illustrating the cultural diaspora and conflicts in this outstanding novel.

• The four Chinese mothers who immigrate to America are in search of a better life. They are in search of a better life, not only for themselves, but for their children as well. The book is centered on San Francisco in the 1970s. The four women who form the Joy Club Club are Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair. Each week they raise money and eat special ethnic Chinese foods that they hope will bring them good …show more content…

The second type is represented in the values encountering between one culture and another. In fact, there are various racial, regional, and national sub-cultures which share characteristics with other subcultures but are defined by their own behaviors. The short story ‘In Cuba I was a German Shepherd’ demonstrates the cultural encounter theme in an effect way as it narrates that four elderly men, two Cuban and two Dominican, meet in a Miami park to play dominoes. The short story explained to the readers that how the cultures are encountered and involved. Ann Menendez explains in her short story ‘In Cuba I was a German Shepherd’ the status of a Cuban in exile with humor and with lovely descriptions of a summer storm in Havana, of a baseball game on a scalding hot day and illustrates how the immigrants lost their dreams whereas they have lived a very bad life. Such feeling makes the Cuban immigrants feel exasperated. The conflicting values are very clear in the short story as encounter in which the cultural and racial supremacy is customized. Such racial supremacy is clear in the short story from the discrimination. This discrimination is demonstrated clearly by the characters of the story as they feel worried and they feel as if they are lost.
The Joy Luck Club explores the clash between Chinese culture and American culture.